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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT DECEMBER 22, 2022
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IN THE LAND OF
GODS & LOVERS The Ringling Museum’s exhibit pays tribute to centuries of Indian paintings and sculpture. SPENCER FORDIN A+E EDITOR
O
n one wall, there’s a scene of a sacred wedding. And on the other, there’s a goddess going full Day of Judgment. The entire human and divine condition is on display at “Gods and Lovers,” the exhibit centered around centuries of Indian painting and sculpture currently housed at the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art. The sculptures, some carved in stone and some cast in metal, were collected by the Ringlings in the 1920s. But the paintings are mostly on loan; only one comes from the Ringling’s permanent collection, and 16 come from a loan from a private collection in South Florida. All of the paintings are small format artworks — also known as miniatures — and they were meant to be held in the hands of people either individually or as part of a book. “Most of the time, they were collected in portfolios. And they were loose or bound,” says Rhiannon Paget, the Ringling Museum’s Curator of Asian Art. “They were designed for someone to sit down for an intimate viewing with one person or a group of people to pass them around and enjoy them in that kind of situation. Not the way we have them framed on the wall.” You may notice that the paintings come from a variety of locales across the Indian subcontinent, and they were all created at points in between the 16th and 19th centuries. Some have raised surfaces and others have wallpaper type borders around them, but they all depict famous cultural tales. One series of paintings depicts the Ramayana, an epic written in Sanskrit that brings Rama on an arduous journey from exile all the way to his eventual return and coronation as king. Another series depicts Photo courtesy of the Ringing Museum
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The Goddess Kali in the cremation ground circa 1850.
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SEE GODS, PAGE 2